Could Harrenhal become a city, ruled by a Council of Merchants, in order to avoid the curse and make it financially viable?

warsofasoiaf:

Doubtful. What made Harrenhal a “thin place” was the collective weight of the atrocities committed by Black Harren, and the mass death of Aegon burning the hold down. A lot of this is guesswork since we don’t have a full breakdown of magic and metaphysics for the world, but in fiction, these sorts of places are created when the evils committed there bleed out and blight the very landscape, crackling the fundamental nature of reality as it exists in the world. It doesn’t matter whether it’s linking the world to another one where the rules don’t apply, or angry ghosts haunt the area never resting. As we see it in Planetos, this happens in areas of mass death and suffering. Old Valyria with its Doom, the empire propped up through slavery and blood magic being obliterated in a massive cataclysm, or Harrenhal through atrocity and bondage perishing in flames, and what we might be in for with Euron’s holy blood magic ritual and the vision of the burning ships on a bloody sea that we see in “The Forsaken.”

And if literature is any judge, anyone who tries to outsmart the curse tends to fall to it all the same. Regardless, I don’t think a change in governmental style will matter much to the hungry Harrenhal.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Also, if you’re going to build a city in the area, expanding Lord Harroway’s Town makes *much* more sense.